Book Essay Example Review

Book Essay Example Review

They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam’s removal from power.
But this is a separate matter with little bearing on whether or not Europe today is like Europe in the 1930s. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. This is hardly a radical idea, but the first national bank legacy visa Lobby doesn’t tolerate even-handedness. Take the Brookings Institution. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. More important, along with Perle and Wurmser, he wrote the famous ‘Clean Break’ report in June 1996 for Netanyahu, who had just become prime minister.

3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a ‘neglectful and discriminatory’ manner towards them.

Netanyahu did not follow their advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser were soon urging the Bush administration to pursue those same goals. Within the Pentagon, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group was charged with finding links between al-Qaida and Iraq that the intelligence community had supposedly missed.
So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel, how are we to explain it?The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. Indeed, 73 per cent said that the United States should not favour either side. Back on Capitol Hill, Congressman Eliot Engel had reintroduced the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles away. ’Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek Security Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to let UN inspectors back in. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it.

Its democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable state of their own or full political rights. Among other things, it recommended that Netanyahu ‘focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right’. (The Senate vote was 94 to 2; the House of Representatives version passed 352 to 21. By early 2002 Cheney had persuaded Bush; and with Bush and Cheney on board, war was inevitable. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby’s task even easier. David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. Although the Lobby remains a powerful force, the adverse effects of its influence are increasingly difficult to hide. But in 2003, the head of the French Jewish community said that ‘France is not more anti-semitic than America. Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times, which occasionally criticises Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but is not even-handed.
For example, Libby pressured CIA analysts to find evidence supporting the case for war and helped prepare Colin Powell’s now discredited briefing to the UN Security Council.

Over time, the administration also adopted Israel’s own justifications of its position, so that US rhetoric began to mimic Israeli rhetoric. It increases the terrorist danger that all states face – including America’s European allies. .
But Washington has had little success, and Iran seems determined to create a nuclear arsenal. It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. That is natural: we have taken their country.

The Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during the October War. A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred towards the end of 2004, when the David Project produced a film alleging that faculty members of Columbia’s Middle East Studies programme were anti-semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who stood up for Israel.
The Lobby pursues two broad strategies.

Lewis (‘Scooter’) Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. More important, saying we could be lyric that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Ehud Barak’s purportedly generous offer at Camp David would have given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli control.
Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. At about the same time, JINSA gave Wolfowitz its Henry M.
in the national pro-Israel effort’. Pro-Israel officials in the vice-president’s office and the Pentagon, as well as neo-conservative pundits like Robert Kagan and William Kristol, put the heat on Powell. ’ In early April, WINEP released a bipartisan report stating that Syria ‘should not miss the message that countries that pursue Saddam’s reckless, irresponsible and defiant behaviour could end up sharing his fate’. But it was a strategy the Lobby favoured and worked actively in Congress to preserve. In May 2003, NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies; similar programmes have been set up at Berkeley, Brandeis and Emory.

‘I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam’s regime. The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration’s policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East.

As one retired Israeli general later put it, ‘Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities. The Lobby and its friends often portray France as the most anti-semitic country in Europe. is the proverbial elephant in the room. Can the Lobby’s power be curtailed? One would like to think so, given the Iraq debacle, the obvious need to rebuild America’s image in the Arab and Islamic world, and the recent revelations about AIPAC officials passing US government secrets to Israel.

For all that, Israel’s armed forces were not in a position to protect US interests in the region. Columbia was hauled over the coals, but a faculty committee which was assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of anti-semitism and the only incident possibly worth noting was that one professor had ‘responded heatedly’ to a student’s question.

If their efforts to shape US policy succeed, Israel’s enemies will be weakened or overthrown, Israel will get a free hand with the Palestinians, and the US will do most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding and paying.
Charles Krauthammer describes this grand scheme as the brainchild of Natan Sharansky, but Israelis across the political spectrum believed that toppling Saddam would alter the Middle East to Israel’s advantage. Although the neo-conservatives were eager to pick a fight with Damascus, the CIA and the State Department were opposed to the idea.
For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. Yet few people would say so publicly, note to jingle bells and most of those who did – including Senator Ernest Hollings and Representative James Moran – were condemned for raising the issue.
Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby’.
Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not penalise them for doing so. In September 2002, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks or behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel. The country’s creation was undoubtedly an appropriate response to the long record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought about fresh crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians.

Israel ancient greek history of food itself would probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and US policy more even-handed. Other neo-conservatives were meanwhile at work in the corridors of power. Sharon visited the White House in early December and had a friendly meeting with Bush. ’ But the Church was guilty merely of protesting against Israeli government policy. to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognised, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.

There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. ’This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: his campaign co-chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than those of the more moderate Americans for Peace Now.

They enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk of the population is indifferent.
Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3. Their efforts were designed partly to keep up the pressure on Bush, and partly to overcome opposition to the war inside and outside the government.
Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies.
Hemi Shalev, a journalist on the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, reported that Sharon’s aides ‘could not hide their satisfaction in view of Powell’s failure. Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Western critics of Israel hardly ever question its right to exist: they question its behaviour towards the Palestinians, as do Israelis themselves. ‘The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East.
Finally, a brief word is in order about the neo-conservatives’ prewar support of Ahmed Chalabi, the unscrupulous Iraqi exile who headed the Iraqi National Congress. A front-page headline in the Wall Street Journal shortly after the war began says it all: ‘President’s Dream: Changing Not Just Regime but a Region: A Pro-US, Democratic Area Is a Goal that Has Israeli and Neo-Conservative Roots.

Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the converse is closer to the truth. We don’t have the full story yet, but scholars like Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins reportedly played important roles in persuading Cheney that war was the best option, though neo-conservatives on his staff – Eric Edelman, John Hannah and Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff and one of the most powerful individuals in the administration – also played their part. Most forces designated for the Middle East, like the Rapid Deployment Force, were kept ‘over the horizon’ and out of harm’s way.
’News reports are more even-handed, in part because reporters strive to be objective, but also because mixed puppy for free it is difficult to cover events in the Occupied Territories without acknowledging Israel’s actions on the ground.

Edgar Bronfman Sr, the president of the World Jewish Congress, was accused of ‘perfidy’ when he wrote a letter to President Bush in mid-2003 urging him to persuade Israel to curb construction of its controversial ‘security fence’. Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its spending on programmes to monitor university activities and to train young advocates, in order to ‘vastly expand the number of students involved on campus. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on 15 September, Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the rem end of the world lyric attacks on the US and bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Congress was also moving to back Sharon. ’ Ephraim Halevy told a WINEP audience that it was now important for the US to get rough with Syria, and the Washington Post reported that Israel was ‘fuelling the campaign’ against Syria by feeding the US intelligence reports about the actions of Bashar Assad, the Syrian president. This transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a harsh reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites students to report ‘anti-Israel’ activity. The same line of thinking was evident in the ‘Clean Break’ study the neo-conservatives wrote for Netanyahu. During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organisations; among them, Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often visits the country. ’ Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation.
Matthew Berger laid out the essence of the bargain in the Jewish Journal: ‘The INC saw improved relations as a way to tap Jewish influence in Washington and Jerusalem and to drum up increased support for its cause. The Lobby’s influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. It’s a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of. Even if one wanted to bring pressure to bear, it made good sense to finish the job in Iraq first.

Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees.
When she was prime minister, Golda Meir famously remarked that ‘there is no such thing as a Palestinian.

Israel’s well-being is one of those interests, but its continued occupation of the vhs c head cleaner West Bank and its broader regional agenda structural insulated panel association are not. The danger of a nuclear handover to terrorists is equally remote, because a rogue state could not be sure the transfer would go undetected or that it would not be blamed and punished afterwards. The Lobby also went to work in Congress.
This legislation was strongly endorsed by the Lobby – by AIPAC especially – and ‘framed’, according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, ‘by some of Israel’s best friends in Congress’.
No one would deny that there is anti-semitism among European Muslims, some of it provoked by Israel’s conduct towards the Palestinians and some of it straightforwardly racist. The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I.
Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry.

According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’.

If there were no Lobby, there would have been no Syria Accountability Act, and US policy towards Damascus would have been more in line with the national interest. 4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.

’By the late 1990s, however, the neo-conservatives were arguing that dual containment was not enough and that regime change in Iraq was essential. In other words, one of the three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. The relationship with Israel actually makes it harder for the US to deal with these states.

Just after the war started, Samuel Freedman reported that ‘a compilation of nationwide opinion polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the Iraq war than the population at large, 52 per cent to 62 per cent. These think tanks employ few, if any, critics of US support for Israel. Sharon continued to develop his plan to impose a unilateral settlement on the Palestinians, based on ‘disengagement’ from Gaza coupled with continued expansion on the West Bank. The father of dual containment was none other than Martin Indyk, who first outlined the strategy in May 1993 at WINEP and then implemented it as director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. ‘Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do,’ he declared. 2 billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an Opec oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them. In the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process was underway, there was only mild criticism of Israel, but it grew stronger with Oslo’s collapse and Sharon’s access to power, becoming quite vociferous when the IDF reoccupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and employed massive force to subdue the second intifada. There is little doubt that Israel and the Lobby were key factors in the decision to go to war.

The Forward once described him as ‘the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the administration’, and selected him in 2002 as first among 50 notables who ‘have consciously pursued Jewish activism’. By the mid-1990s there was considerable dissatisfaction with dual containment, because it made the United States the mortal enemy of two countries that hated each other, and forced Washington to bear the burden of containing both.

It occasionally helped protect other US allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing its own client states. Viewed objectively, its past and present conduct offers no moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians. Another Pentagon group, the so-called Office of Special Plans, was given the task of uncovering evidence that could be used to sell the war. Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: ‘All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. ’Pro-Israel forces have long been interested in getting the US military more directly involved in the Middle East.
Many of the key organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party’s expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo peace process.